In December 2024, Badri and I went to Vietnam. In this post, I’ll document our experiences with the visa process of Vietnam. Vietnam requires an e-visa to enter the country. The official online portal for the e-visa application is evisa.xuatnhapcanh.gov.vn/. However, I submitted my visa application on the website vietnamvisa.govt.vn. It was only after submitting my application and making the payment that I realized that it’s not the official e-visa website. The realization came from the tagline mentioned in the top left corner of the website - the best way to obtain a Vietnam visa.
I was a bit upset that I got tricked by that website. I should have checked the top level domains of Vietnam’s government websites. Anyways, it is pretty easy to confuse govt.vn with gov.vn. I also paid double the amount of the official visa fee. However, I wasn’t asked to provide a flight reservation or hotel bookings - documents which are usually asked for most of the visas. But they did ask me for a photo. I was not even sure whether the website was legit or not.
Badri learnt from my experience and applied through the official Vietnam government website. During the process, he had to provide a hotel booking as well as enter the hotel address into the submission form. Additionally, the official website asked to provide the exact points of entry to and exit from the country, which the non-official website did not ask for. On the other hand, he had to pay only 25 USD versus my 54 USD.
It turned out that the website I registered on was also legit, as they informed me a week later that my visa has been approved, along with a copy of my visa. Further, I was not barred from entering and found to be holding a fake visa. It appears that the main “scam” is not about the visa being fake, but rather that you will be charged more than if you apply through the official website.
I would still recommend you (the readers) to submit your visa application only through the official website and not on any of the other such websites.
Our visa was valid for a month (my visa was valid from the 4th of December 2024 to the 4th of January 2025). We also had a nice time in Vietnam. Stay tuned for my Vietnam travel posts!
Credits to Badri for proofreading and writing his part of the experience.